Extinction Burst
by siDEADde
Summary: But the subway is different. When Shaw sees the lava lamp and puts two and two together, it hits her like a ton of bricks. So she stays behind, facing the hole in the wall where the phone hides. In the cool dark of the subway, time is fluid.


**A/N: Originally posted on Tumblr for XiphoidProcess, my sister from another mister who, like me, doesn't always need kittens and puppies and endings happily tied in a bow to be satisfied. Sometimes we're only happy when it rains.**

Extinction Burst

They need to find Finch.

But the subway is different. When Shaw sees the lava lamp and puts two and two together, it hits her like a ton of bricks. So she stays behind, facing the hole in the wall where the phone hides. In the cool dark of the subway, time is fluid.

There is still no sign of Finch.

Shaw's not eaten in two days. Bear's head rests in her lap, his eyes turned up to her face; hers are flat and staring.

It's been two days and there will be no closure.

They could not claim the body. While Reese focuses all his attention on locating Finch, Fusco scrabbles through records to find where she's buried. When he returns with a number to a plot, Shaw doesn't even turn her head. She is tired of numbers.

She sits motionless, her eyes glued to the phone.

On day three, it is Reese who breaks first. The silent phone, Finch's missing limp, Shaw's shadow-ringed eyes –- they drive his threatening whisper to a howl at the scrolling monitors and it is only by throwing himself in front of the man that Fusco manages to save the hardware. Reese stalks out of the subway with a death wish and a bag full of guns and after a moment Fusco decides Reese needs more watching than Shaw.

As soon as she is alone she moves, slow and deliberate, to lift the handset from its cradle and set it against her right ear, as tribute. And in kind, there is no sound, not even a dial tone. Nothing.

"Where were you?" Shaw's tone mirrors her lifeless eyes until her voice catches and she stops, pulling a slow breath in to continue. "Where were you when she needed you–" the tile walls echo as something snaps within her and her voice rises to a scream. "–you let her die!"

Silence greets the outburst, and when there is no reply, Shaw lets the handset drop and it swings in the same crazy arc of the last two weeks. An impossible escape and a return to the comfort of wetwork against her captors, Shaw'd never planned on seeing her ever again. It was too risky and just the thought of putting a bullet between those beautiful brown eyes made her feel. Shaw doesn't do feeling. After killing various incarnations of Reese and Finch 7,000 times, there is a good possibility she's desensitized to their deaths. In fact, Shaw kinda wants to kill Reese to get rid of the pity in his eyes when he looks at her. His sad glances are just another reminder that she is gone.

Shaw is comforted by the familiar heat of rage; it is better than the emptiness of the past three days. This is something she can work with. She grabs the two remaining guns in the locker and stuffs an earpiece into her ear. She will make them pay, despite the whisper in the back of her head telling her they don't have enough to cover the cost.

s§s

Spinning doesn't make her vomit anymore. Even if it did, there is nothing in her to throw up. This emptiness is different than the one Shaw carried with her day to day. Normally she felt like her heart was buried in sand, never accelerating except for when the hot burst of anger melted the grains into a glass cage. Now the cage is empty and her chest is hollow and echoing. Shaw was wrong before when she said she felt nothing. She had no idea how terrible nothing actually is.

They've saved the president and there's still no Finch. Reese and Fusco keep asking her if she's ok, and she's so not that she wants to scream at them for being able to go and see the newly mounded dirt, for being able to mourn a friend while she cannot mourn her love. Shaw could have gone without an umbrella and pretended her cheeks were wet from the rain, but maybe echoing isn't as terrible as aching.

She misses the sand. And Bear.

But most of all, Shaw misses her and her unwavering confidence, and that uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time, her Goddess whispering in her ear. This time they were saved by people The Machine has recruited to take their place. Apparently, they're all expendable and the acolyte is the first to be martyred.

There isn't even anger anymore. When Reese growls in her ear that they've found another lead, that they have Finch this time, Shaw realizes she is tired but there is still a little heat below the ashes. She fans the embers with soft brown curls and a wicked arched eyebrow and the way that lithe body had arched and hummed in Shaw's hands.

The flame is small, but it is there - she feeds it one memory at a time to keep it alive.

Even small things are something to be feared.

s§s

They are outmanned and outgunned and Shaw has no doubt now.

They are all going to die.

Finch had left her and Reese behind sealed doors, walking without hesitation into the belly of the beast after telling them both to leave. She'd had to drag Reese from the building after pistolwhipping him hard enough to knock him unconscious. Reese would never leave Finch voluntarily and Shaw couldn't leave Reese to die and therefore herself alone to fight her way back to Bear and Fusco and 050313. He'd woken angry and silent, and she'd thought that she wasn't enough to live for again until his hand had found her shoulder and squeezed.

She misses him now, too, in the blinks between the hail of bullets raining on her and Fusco as they attempt to defend the subway from desperate Samaritan agents, whose God (or maybe Goddess, Sameen doesn't see why gender is important but _she_ had always been adamant about The Machine so it's just a habit) seems in its death throes and Shaw wants Fusco to get out and take Bear because no child should grow up without the father they love. Lee shares a vowel cluster with Sameen, and that's all they should share.

She sees no way out. Then the subway car starts to move and her earpiece whines feedback loud enough to muffle the gunshots. Those things aren't what bring her to her knees though.

"Can you hear me?"

"Root?" Time, fluid before in this cool, dark place, stops completely. She doesn't know if she spoke aloud.

"Sameen, sweetie. Nine o'clock."

Her arm swings and her finger pulls the trigger but her eyes are still closed because she knows if she opens them the dream will be over. Shaw will be in a subway car with a Malinois and an NYPD Detective and way too many Playstations, and they will be gaining momentum away from the lava lamp and into the unknown. She vaguely hears Fusco cheer her shot.

"Stand up, Sam, open your eyes. You're going to have an opportunity to get off in the next minute, and it will be your only chance to get to safety."

Her hands are shaking but she's galvanized into action with the hope she can do more for Fusco than she could for her brother-in-arms. She sucks in a deep breath and turns to bark a command; she can tell by the look on Fusco's face that her own is streaked with tears. He doesn't ask, just nods at her instructions and grabs Bear's leash in preparation for the momentary slowing.

"Go to Lee." Fusco looks for a moment like he wants to hug her, then changes his mind at her steely expression and red-rimmed eyes. As they come around the corner, a lighted platform unfolds before them, he jumps, pulling the dog behind. She doesn't look back.

"You were supposed to go with him." The voice is disappointed but not surprised and as the car picks up speed, Shaw settles against the consoles, her finger lightly against her ear.

"How much longer do I have you?" She doesn't know if she's asking about her own death, or The Machine's. It doesn't really matter to her now that she knows Root's will be the last voice she hears.

"Five minutes or forever, Sameen. I've seen them both."


End file.
